We would like to welcome Gladys Lebron-Martinez as the new Resident Engagement Manager on our Home City Development, Inc (HCDI) and Housing Management Resources (HMR) team. A five term Holyoke City Councilor and long-time leader at Career Point (Mass Hire) Holyoke, Lebron-Martinez has been a visionary champion for community growth and development for many years.
Over the years Lebron-Martinez has become a powerhouse in the community. Dedicated to growing her networks and partnerships, she utilizes those to give back to her community and to building leadership in the next generation. She is a great advocate of connecting larger institutions with youth programs, to build leadership within the youth who will ultimately give back to the community.
Always thinking about the future and how she can engage and guide the community toward a better and brighter future, Lebron-Martinez was ready for a change in the past year. “I was soul searching [during the pandemic], working from home, looking at innovations, and [Enid Berrios from HMR] approached me.” Lebron-Martinez made her decision carefully and wisely, looking at the leadership and the goals of the HCDI/HMR. She wanted to engage with heart-centered leaders like Tom Kegelman, Executive Director, and work for an organization steeped in humanity.
Lebron-Martinez began working in resident engagement in the 1990s. She began with Nueva Esperanza Inc., through which she worked with Community Builders (with Berrios and Kegelman), then to workforce development in a leadership capacity with Career Point Holyoke (now Mass Hire). She has already established countless partnerships in her prolific career and brings them with her to HCDI. With Career Point Holyoke she partnered with organizations like Gary Rome and the Holyoke Medical Center, to sponsor youth in the Holyoke Public Schools. Over the years she has worked closely with employers like Six Flags and even the Appalachian Trail, to connect the youth to summer jobs with meaningful experience and opportunity for growth.
“Alex Morse [Mayor of Holyoke, youngest ever to be elected] came through my program, and that’s how he dreamed [and grew]. He came every year from college [onward] to serve my community with my summer youth program. He ran it for me.”
Lebron-Martinez started at HCDI in early March. In April she held two job fairs to connect youth in the community with meaningful summer jobs, bringing in Six Flags, Chicopee Value Opportunity Council, Girls Inc., and a number of other organizations.
Another part of her initial work phase is to reach out to the residents to determine what resources the resident engagement team should be looking for to fit their needs. While they are gathering survey results, she is finding that many residents are looking for credit repair, job training, and looking to own their own home one day.
“One of the goals of this organization is to provide affordable housing, but not to…store people…to stay here for a lifetime. It’s been a cycle — people of color staying in public housing…there is a system that sets us up. I say this because I was in it myself before I purchased my home.”
Lebron-Martinez moved here from Puerto Rico in 1969 at age 12. Her family settled in Springfield on Nursery Street. She grew up in public housing and emphasizes that she knows the benefits and the pitfalls. She wants to empower others in the community, to show them that because she succeeded, they have the strength and talent to succeed as well. This is also why she is an advocate of the Family Self Sufficiency (FSS) program, a program that enables HUD-assisted families to increase their earned income and reduce their dependency on welfare assistance and rental subsidies. Money is placed into an escrow where the residents can later pay for medical expenses or education or a house. HCDI received FSS funding earlier this year.
“I’m a go-getter,” she says, “I have the energy. I am a grandmother of nine, and a mother of four. I’ve got a lot of hope for my youth. I believe in youth leadership. Because we as adults…have not been able to change. The change agent, I believe in them, is the young people.”